While I commend the agent for her optimism, her response to my question was far from accurate. In the field of Statistics, probability is the measure of how likely an event is to occur. It is not a permanent quality of the universe. Probability is not static; it changes with each new data point. For instance, if I had arrived at the airport an hour earlier, the probability that I would make the flight would have been much greater than if I had arrived just 45 minutes prior. To suggest that the probability of my making the flight would remain “immutable for all of time” is simply UrRong. The most correct thing the agent could have said was that the probability of me making the flight was low, given the timing of my arrival.
